Formation – Rose Butler, Ruth Levene, Victoria Lucas and Ian Nesbitt

The works in the Formation exhibition explore the idea of looking. Whether standing still and observing a phenomena or walking as a means of creative investigation, each work seeks to uncover not only the natural site but what looking at it might mean. Where does the urban realm stop and the countryside begin? What information do we draw from the landscape (peace, threat, the sublime)? What do we project onto it? Is nature simply a resource reserve to support human life, or does it have its own logic?

Formation opens with Ruth Levene and Ian Nesbitt’s Field Notes from 2013 in which the pair walk the ‘non-route’ of the 65mile city boundary as defined by the Ordnance Survey Map. The boarder demarcates land ownership, city jurisdictions and stretches through the industrial complex, bog-lands, hedgerows and farmland. Throughout the 9 day, 75 hour walk the artists record their observations in a diary and the film Boundary Walk reflects both the sense of adventure in undertaking the task and the questions that such an activity raises: Where is that? Who owns this land? Where are we? What is happening here?

The scene then jumps into the landscape of the Alabama Hills, in Victoria Lucas’ collection of friezes, sculptures and archival film footage collected from Westerns and showing women escaping on horses from men pursuing them into the hills. Immortalised by the Hollywood film industry the rock formations just east of the Sierra Nevada and West of the White Mountains in California have provided the backdrop for numerous films throughout the Twentieth and Twenty-first century. And, in doing so far have participated in the production of our collective vision of ‘land’, ‘nature’ and ‘landscape’ through the spectacular mediated form of film. The life-size boulders recreate the materiality of the cinematic acting as monuments to our collective projections of value, symbolism and identity into the landscape.

Rose Butler’s The Fairs (2016) turns the tables back onto the pleasures and frictions generated by old rural traditions re-formed for new urban times. Since the industrial revolution, travelling fairs have made their way through the countryside and into the centre of urban cities bringing with them cultural content, news and trade. Over the years this has morphed into the travelling fair. Filmed from a city centre car park, a disorganized urban scene unfolds from the perspective of a static camera. Occasionally, the tip of fairground ride rises over the horizon accompanied by the frenetic screams of the riders. Disjuncture is produced between the dismal scene,  the ecstatic pleasure and the sense of voyeurism produced by the dislocated gaze of the camera which looks behind the scenes of this infrastructure of escapism and short-term physical release.

Invisible infrastructures are considered by artist Ruth Levene in Our Waters (2017). For millennia, the water has carved the land through the formation of rivers and tributaries. Human infrastructure has developed to harness this natural resource through the re-routing of streams, waterways and reservoirs. As the urban landscape has expanded reducing trees and changing peat to agricultural ground surface, the speed of water travel has increased. This in turn increases the risk of flooding. Developed through a residency at the department of Civil Engineering at The University of Sheffield, Our Waters explores the interconnected systems of the drains, pipes, sewage works and the policies and politics that underpin discussions of the future of an infrastructure we take for granted but which is bursting at the seams.

Formation is part of Making Ways, a new programme supported by Sheffield Culture Consortium through Arts Council England to showcase, celebrate and develop the exceptional contemporary visual art produced in the city.

Abandon Normal Devices Festival is hosted by Peak District National Park and National Trust (Peak District). Supported using public funding by Arts Council England with additional support from BFI, British Council and Sheffield programme partners Site Gallery.